PHOTO - (from left) Yang Berbahagia Prof Datin Paduka Dr Khatijah Binti Mohd Yusoff, Deputy Secretary General (Science) of MOSTI; IMDC 2012 Grand Prize winners Rabiah Adawiyah binti Shahad; Mohamad Faizal bin Abdullah; Muhamad Khairul Amilin bin Muhamad Hassim of Universiti Teknologi Malaysia; Johan Mahmood Merican, CEO of Talent Corporation Malaysia; and Choo Wai Heng, MD of Dream Catcher Consulting.

Cultivating innovative and creative engineering in Malaysia is the main objective of the industry-academia partnership behind the second iteration of this year's Innovate Malaysia Design Competition.

ICT firms, which included Agilent Technologies, Altera, Intel Malaysia, National Instruments and SilTerra, partnered with government agencies Talent Corporation Malaysia (TalentCorp), Multimedia Development Corporation (MDeC) and Ministry of Science, Technology and Innovation (MOSTI) to organise the second Innovate Malaysia Design Competition (IMDC) 2012.

The year-long competition, which was open to all engineering and computer science final year undergraduates, ended in a Grand Finale held late July.

"We are fully supportive of this initiative by these five industry leaders because it cultivates skill-sets that closely match industry demands," said MOSTI deputy secretary general (science) Prof Datin Paduka Dr Khatijah Mohd Yusoff. "It is encouraging to see the industry complementing universities' efforts in developing the next generation of ICT talent. We hope to see greater participation from technology leaders within the industry, be it in the form of competitions such as this or other creative methods."

"We are very pleased with the increased quality of project submissions this year," said Intel Malaysia director of strategic programs, Intel architecture group, Ng Hong Soo, who spoke on behalf of the participating IT companies. "We believe that the participants have captured the spirit of innovation and creative thinking in the process. It is our hope to see upcoming graduates bring this same spirit into their working environment in the coming years."

Biomedical project

This year, apart from funding specialised industry platform trainings, TalentCorp also funded soft skills trainings to the participating teams. These training sessions were held at various universities across the country to help groom future talent in presentation, communication and inter-personal skills.

"For Malaysia to emerge as a developed nation and a global talent destination by 2020, we must recognise the importance of optimising our home-grown talent, who are our most precious resource," said TalentCorp chief executive officer, Johan Mahmood Merican.

The winning team came from University Technology Malaysia, comprising Mohamad Faizal bin Abdullah, Muhamad Khairul Amilin bin Muhamad Hassim and Rabiah Adawiyah binti Shahad. This team secured the grand prize of the MOSTI Innovate Malaysia Award, defeating more than 100 registered teams nationwide.

The winning project, called 'Lab-On-Chip', is a cell counting device commonly used in biomedical research. Based on Agilent Technologies' USB data acquisition (DAQ) family, the device is a low-cost and effective miniature version of conventional, bulkier and more expensive technologies.

The teams also underwent various engineering and software design training and activities organised by their respective technology sponsors. The activities allowed participants to work with world-class technology platforms and high-tech industry tools, where they gained exposure and hands-on experience in an industry environment.

All projects were conducted on selected industrial platforms supported by the technology sponsors such as the Test and Measurement Platform by Agilent, Field Programmable Gate Arrays (FPGA) Platform by Altera, Platform based on the Intel Atom processor by Intel, Integrated Circuit by SilTerra, and Embedded Acquisition & Control by National Instument.

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